Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @03:31PM
from the progress-means-everyone-gets-less dept.

NicknamesAreStupid writes "It looks like T-Mobile is following the lead of Verizon and AT&T in shifting from unlimited data plans to tiered pricing. It starts with their family plans which may be cheaper than unlimited depending on your family's usage. Was this done for its customers' families or for its future parent, AT&T?"

Of course, if you plant to torrent or watch streaming HD movies on your cellphone (I don't know why anyone would want to watch movies on the tiny screen, though, it makes my eyes hurt after about 20 min), that's your call. Just remember that you pressed the button.I use my 500MB plan for checking email, occasionally browsing, using Google Reader, or Maps for navigation, and in the three months I've had my Nexus S, I have yet to hit even 400MB.

To each their own, YMMV, and all that. My lil' two year old Hero does 1-4GiB monthly. A little YouTube, a little Pandora, quite a bit off RSS stuff, GPS, Yelp and other social apps, and there you are, a GiB easily. And that is not counting usage on available WAPs.

You might not waste money on a smartphone, but please spend some on math tutoring.

Its a marketing thing. I decided that cheating lying marketing people would take the phrase "two gigs" to mean 2 gigaBITS and you assumed they aren't out to get you and they very generously meant 2 gigaBYTES. If you divide by 8, hilariously you end up within seconds of my estimate. The difference is apparently you broke out the calculator to get the exact answer and I did it in my head, admittedly I was showing off a bit, knowing it was "way more than four mins but maybe around a quarter less than five m

They'll hit you with a text message and pull you down to roughly 50kbps. It's actually worse than what EDGE could do, with all of the power consumption of HSPA. Funny enough, if you go 2G only, the speed cap appears to go away, and your data bandwidth goes up (latency also goes up, due to the tech).

Great! Competition will fix it! Oh look Verizon and AT&T are really making everybody step up their games! Wait... what's this I hear? Every major company is eliminating their unlimited plans, so now no company feels compelled to do so? Competition is driving features backwards? As long as all companies maintain the status quo, they can wring more money out of us for less features? You're right, the free market is surely sorting this out.

AT&T got rid of unlimited plans on their phone service long ago. The only ones left are the ones who got unlimited plans when they were still available, as AT&T has decided to grandfather them in. I trust next we'll see AT&T putting an end to the grandfathering.

Nah, caps should be easy to implement and have an immediate perceived money saving effect by postponing infrastructure upgrades. Filtering is a complicated bunch of work with less obvious payoff.

Not that I'd be surprised to see AT&T (or any company with an internet/TV cannibalization contradiction) eventually throttling or otherwise interfering with sites that compete with their TV business. Maybe a better warning sign for such a plan would be to see them creating something similar to the unlimited in-n

Honestly, I'd expect Sprint to hold onto no data caps for WiMax a little longer, just to pull in subscribers that have nowhere else to go.

But, yes, this sucks, and it *will* only get worse once AT&T has swallowed T-Mobile. Heck, I went to T-Mobile because AT&T sucked so hard. At this rate, I'll have to go to Google/Microsoft's as-yet-unannounced TVBD-based phones.

In Australia we've had caps for a long time, with some providers giving cheaper versions of Facebook (because Facebook provides a mobile-optimised version at m.facebook.com) accessed through their provider-specific starting screens. They don't block Bing or Google, they don't block MySpace, they just provide cheaper access to the things that will help sign people up to their plans.

There are laws against offering people one thing and selling them another.

Plans were not unlimited to begin with (unless your plan was 6-7+ years old)

They always had a 5GB Cap, so all this "They are not longer unlimited, they are now 2/5/10GB caps" is misleading -- you're actually getting a middle-man choice now...

Before most carriers went from 100/200MB to 5GB(aka ""Unlimited""), nothing in the middle. You paid either $15 or $30/month for ~200MB/5GB respectively. At least now the options are more like 200MB/1GB/2GB/5GB/++ with a better price structure.. And I do like that T-Mobile doesn't charge extra for going over.

Yes, it really was an unfortunate marketing decision to start using the term 'unlimited.' Now that they are being more honest about what truly is being offered, people have the perception that they are being screwed out of something that they really didn't even come close to utilizing the whole time. This will only negatively affect the abusers. If you're downloading gigabytes of data, you should not be doing it over the cellular network.

I really would prefer this method...For most things, I could deal with slow data (and wifi) for a few days at the end of the month when I run close to the cap. If I really need more that month (say I am traveling and using the phone as my sole point of contact), I should have the option to call them up and say "here's another $15, please uncap me for the rest of the month".

Unless you are just talking about T-Mobile, you are incorrect. Carriers used to call their 5GB plans unlimited but that is no longer true. Phone plans are truly unlimited on Verizon and I believe Sprint and AT&T as well. 5GB Plans for other devices are called 5GB.

AT&T is capped at 2GB for $90 a month. I am being raped here but the unlimited plans are only for non smart phones. Andriods and Iphones are tired and limited to 2GB per month. So you can buy a crap phone that can't do X,Y, or Z or you can join the rest of the world, but yo are being capped while your friends who got them earlier are not.

I agree. I am still on an unlimited data plan, but it is from2007 . Most new *g services have a cap to meet a price point, and because the higher bandwidth of new generation phones are going to kill the network if used by the teen age boy viewing pron 24X7 or the older guy viewing sports clip over the same time frame. So instead of fake unlimited plans we have real limited plans. This is shown in the T-Mobile thing. It has nothing to do with ATT. It has to do with expanded 3G and anticipated 4G coverag

Yeah... the way this story is beling blown out of proprtion is ridiculous. The $30/month "unlimited" plan has been soft-capped at 5GB for years now. They explain this to you, but also explain thatA) You won't get charged more for going over.B) You won't get disconnected for going over.C) The speed they limit you to is still somewhere around 200kbps - a lot less than 3G but easily sufficient for web browsing and email, and usable for low-res video.

Yes, it's "giving up", but I think it's better to have T-Mobile's kind of capping (where speed gets reduced) than a nice little surprise on your bill with per-GB (or whatever the "over the bucket" bucket size is). It means your bill stays predictable, which is what most users want. If it's slow, it's not a problem for most users, annoying, but not a problem

If it's slow, it's not a problem for most users, annoying, but not a problem

And that right there is making the marketing people scream... allow that meme to escape into the wilderness, and business model of getting most of your profit from people who buy the fastest, might not work anymore.

It was all a scam, get people used to living off data, then start jacking the prices up. Just like a drug dealer.

Next you will see the caps start getting lower and lower ( on home wired connections too ), to the point that your bill goes up and up on overage just for 'normal' use. And you can forget about all that streaming media from the 'cloud'.

Who else around here remembers the $ for x dollars a month and HUGE overages without a warning? One w

I am willing to bet a lot of people would prefer to replace their Cable, DSL, Fiber with a Cell connection, if it were affordable enough. 3G is fast enough for most browsing.

Cell phones got popular when they removed the extra fees like roaming costs and free long distance calling. Now it seems like they forgot about this with overly expensive data plans with caps. Even if it is cheaper people don't like caps,

I am willing to bet a lot of people would prefer to replace their Cable, DSL, Fiber with a Cell connection, if it were affordable enough. 3G is fast enough for most browsing.

Cell phones got popular when they removed the extra fees like roaming costs and free long distance calling. Now it seems like they forgot about this with overly expensive data plans with caps. Even if it is cheaper people don't like caps,

I have a cell connection because there is no other choice (other than dialup) where I live. 1.5MB/s. Not quite the 3G/4G experience, but, works when there is no substitute. Plug the card/device into a router that supports it as a WAN connection. I'm also on one of the older plans that truly was unlimited (70GB usage last month, one fixed price).

I have on average "two bars" at my house. Some observations:
- 150KB/s downloads. ~200KB/s through Steam on good days.
- 150ms - 250ms average ping times. Good for browsing, horrible for online gaming.
- Carriers can and will silently drop idle connections. You need to reboot the router or remove / reinsert device to get a new signal.
- Multiple streams of data absolutely crawl the connection (try opening 10 links off of Google search at same time, good luck).
- Last but not least, in poor conditions, 16KB/s downloads, 750ms-1000ms average ping times. Happens maybe once or twice a week.

Previously had cable before moving to where I am. In my view, I don't see this an acceptable substitute for Cable/DSL/Fiber anytime in the near future. There is a VERY noticeable quality difference even Joe six-pack or grandma would notice. That and as you mentioned the data caps will kill any netflix streaming, steam downloads (5 games purchased in past month @ 4GB min each), etc. Both the plans and technology will need to improve. I'm waiting for that day to come myself.

In February the cable modem I was leasing from Comcast died. Prior to that, I was putting up with a full-day outage at least once every other month, and never got anything close to the speeds they advertised. They told me it would take 3-5 weeks to fix the problem because the modem had to be "installed" by a technician, and they were very busy. I asked if I would be billed for the time I wasn't able to use my connection and they said yes, so I cancelled my service and droppe

3G may be fast enough, but it's extremely expensive. Although a combined phone+data that allowed browsing could be cheaper than phone+isp. Now how do you connect your phone to your computer? (wifi with some expensive ones but isn't it better to avoid wifi for speed/security reasons?)

Voice doesn't have the same issue in general. People physically can not say on the phone talking ALL THE TIME. If nothing else, they sleep at some point, but in reality, people do many things besides dedicate themselves to a phone call. Phone calls also use a pretty insignificant amount of data thanks to modern compression technics.

Phones with apps that continually do stuff in the background or play full motion acceptable resolution video on the other hand can continually put a large load on the network

IF and only IF the caps actually CHANGED. As it sits now, AT&T's "Tiered" plans haven't changed in four god damned years. The 250MB bottom tier should be at least 1GB now for transfer.

The real criminal act is they aren't updating what you get, they simply keep the limits static. If they want to adopt this shit business model then they need to keep up with upping the bandwidth limits.

is not collusion, but a desire to force the issue with content providers over who pays for high bandwidth services. As services, such as video streaming, become more common networks will become more heavily loaded and the cell phone companies will need to invest things that can keep data flowing. They, off course, don't want to make that investment just to keep money flowing to content providers. So, they need to find a way to shift the costs to the content providers and eventually the users.

By capping data, they can lessen the uptake of these services since people won't what to pay overages. By lessoning the uptake, they slow the growth of the content companies which means they are worth less, giving them a vested interest in figuring out a way to share revenue to pay for the pipe. They'll charge the consumer more, pay an access fee and the cell phone companies are happy. You might think the content providers would be mad - but that also creates a barrier to entry since new companies would need to pony up cash before they have subscribers, making it hard to offer free or low cost services since they customer would find them to use bandwidth were the big players are "free from usage charges."

In the end, it comes down to money. The cell phone companies don't what to be freeway on which content providers gore rich - they want a slice of the pie and by controlling the last mile, they have some leverage.

Nothing screams "reptile brained monkeys" like human greed. Our system takes greed and puts it on steroids and attempts to hose every living creature for every drop of worth they can for the least amount in exchange. Yes, I remember being burned for 25 cents on up per minute to use POTS. It was like we were all dumb enough to pay them for the "magic call box", they did it as long as they could. And everyone cheers them on and wants to be just like them. It's like being born and raised in Hell, you don't know any better.

My idea is NetFlicks is putting the major burn to every cable company and their cronies want the hammer dropped on them in any avenue possible. Imagine how great it is to be able to just watch your awesome little phone like a TV? Better than "TV" because you can watch WTF you want, when you want it. But this isn't about you getting what you want or even pay for. This is about you being a good little zombie and being farmed for all that you are worth. They want to continue making a fortune off of you from their old tech that has already made them fortunes. That's the bitch about corporations, they can be owned and orchestrated from higher up. This means the entire landscape can be orchestrated to farm us all. This is where the irony is so fucking thick it would kill if it was comedy. All of this happens in "land of the free". Hey, fuckers, you are anything but free.

The only problems we ever see is the want-to-be hive mind of the corporate hydra having internal conflict with its own stupidity. Once it sorts things out, it sics its toady pet governments into action to enforce their will. There is no legitimate excuse for WTF they do with this issue, they are just testing the waters to see how far they can plunge it into us. Its like gasoline prices. They find out just how far they can press the issue before the lemmings become restless.

IT is a tricky crowd to nail down in economic oppression and totalitarianism, you put the squeeze to them, they invent new ways to burn you back. Its best to wait for them to make products that the lemmings can't live without and nail the zombies. They will squeeze the zombies until they cry, then squeeze them until they shut up.

These caps are just the beginning, don't expect to change it, except for the worse. It time to milk the zombies.

Don't think so? Gasoline shouldn't be more than 25 cents a gallon. Seriously, I watched this happen over the years. Who the fuck do they think they are trying to fool? You can't fool everyone all the time. Gas was 25 cents a gallon and there wasn't a shortage. There never was a fucking shortage, nor probably ever will there be a real shortage in even our grandkid's lives. Its all about manipulation of idiot lemmings. They found out we are all dependent enough, and stupid enough to pay whatever they charge for gas, so here we are at $4 a gallon instead of 25 cents.

They're not really capping your bandwidth, even the 200mb per month plan technically allows for unlimited data transfer. What they're doing is throttling your speed down to EDGE instead of HSPA+ once you hit your 'cap'. If you happen to actually need higher data speeds than edge for more than 200mb per month, then t-mobile offers higher tiered data options.
Frankly I wish most cellular companies offered that sort of flexibility in their data offerings.

Although I am not a lawyer, there would seem to be an issue concerning the sale of "unlimited" plans, if there is a data cap on them. I know when I signed up with T-Mobile I went for the unlimited option and was assured that unlimited meant just that, unlimited. There was no mention of a data cap. By quietly imposing a data cap on so-called 'unlimited' plans, it would appear that T-Mobile are playing rather fast and lose with Federal law. In particular, The Uniform Commercial Code, Section 2-313 [cornell.edu] (2) states that,

"(a) Any affirmation of fact or promise made by the seller which relates to the goods and becomes part of the basis of the bargain creates an express warranty that the goods shall conform to the affirmation or promise.

(b) Any description of the goods which is made part of the basis of the bargain creates an express warranty that the goods shall conform to the description."

So, why are T-Mobile not in violation of these provisions?Are there any legal types who can explain how this can be legitimate?

They have two options. They can either grandfather you in, in which case you still have unlimited plan, and only new signups will have the limits, or they can offer you a new contract, which you have the option of declining without penalty (ETF)

I'm more concerned that the advertising (for all carriers) shows how awesome it will be to stream movies, music, and media, and yet severely penalize the users who actually take them up on their advertising.

Look at the early termination provisions in your contract. They will stipulate that they can change the terms at any time, and you have 30 days to notify them if you do not accept the changed terms. If you don't notify them, you are put on the new tariff. If you do, they take your handset back and cut off your service.

So, why are T-Mobile not in violation of these provisions? Are there any legal types who can explain how this can be legitimate?

Good luck fighting that one in binding arbitration. They have your signature on their terms and conditions: [t-mobile.com], which they can change any time they feel like it, really meaning you already agreed to anything they want.

- To provide a good experience for the majority of our customers and minimize capacity issues and degradation in network performance, we may take measures including temporarily reducing data throughput for a subset of customers who use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth. If your total usage

Article 2 of the UCC is for goods, not for services. If you want to argue that you bought a phone, the UCC determines whether a transaction is for goods or services based on the majority of the worth of the transaction. If I buy a $1000 water heater and installation is faulty, but installation is a service of $200 worth, then it's still considered a contract for goods. Cell phone carriers make much more money on the service side than by selling subsidized phones.

Rather than just passively saying "Oops, you went over your data limit, we'll automatically give you more and charge you for it", they just switch you to 2G data speeds if you hit your limit. Cell companies have been looking for "we'll give you enough rope to hang yourself" opportunities at every turn ("oh, gee, you didn't know your kid was sending hundreds of messages and downloading porn at $1.00 per kilobyte until the gigantic bill showed up at the end of the month?") and it's nice to see one of them giving you a NICE way out instead of using data overages as another way to screw you.

Now, if carriers would just quit charging me once for the bits, and again for sending them to another device (tethering), I'd be REALLY happy.

stop making devices that can do stuff then crippling what they can do. if it can stream internet video, then it should be expected, that over a month, many days worth of content will be consumed. it is also expected to be at the hi speeds that are advertised.

At one time they had great customer service, competitive pricing, and cutting edge phones. They don't have any of that now. This is just another manifestation. My contract is up later this year, and I am leaving FOR CERTAIN!

I'm curious because I use t-mobile because they are cheaper than the competition and have what I need. I use the Even More Plus w/500 minutes and signed up before these limits were in place (though I think there was always some fine print... not too sure though). If you currently use them, wouldn't you be grandfathered into your plan and not need to worry about these new rates?

Seriously though, what's a good alternative for a carrier that has a phone I can use in Europe as well (so I'm saying I nee

Having previously worked for a US national cell phone company that went through mergers/buyouts, I can tell you this. Until the date that the purchase is approved and announced, there is a "wall" between these two carriers. I guarantee T-Mobile's marketing dept is not making business decisions with any thought or concern about whether AT&T will like it or not, because the people who make those decisions are not allowed to talk to each other. Marketing and engineering teams are not allowed to start ta

Two weeks ago, while streaming "The Riches" via Netflix (great show, untimely demise), my T-Mobile 4G broadband connection dropped out and, almost simultaneously, I received a text message from T-Mobile that reads, "Free T-Mobile MSG: You have used over 5GB of data this month. Your data speed has been reduced for the rest of your billing cycle per the terms of your plan." They throttled me down to 50 Kb/s, dial-up modem speed. The internet suddenly became unusable.

What's the real bottleneck for 4G broadband? I've heard that the cell towers have only so much bandwidth, and that any one cluster of towers is usually shared by all providers of that area. If that's the case then they have to do some sort of throttling or shaping or whatever you call it.

You should go see a doctor, there's a cure for that by today. Don't be ashamed, you have no idea how many people suffer from the same condition, it's just that nobody wants to talk about it because it's a bit embarrassing.